Night Owl Cards

  On Friday, I published post number 5,750 on Night Owl Cards.   It's not a number as nice-and-round as others, but it prompted me to do something I haven't done for the previous milestone posts. Every time I reach a round-number total and write about it here, someone always comments that the total is actually larger because of the various set blogs I've run. So I decided this time, for the first time, to total them all up.   Including this post, it comes to 8,268 total when adding the 1971, 1975, 1985 Topps and 1993 Upper Deck blog totals. I've got some posts on "A Pack To Be Named Later" but I'm not sure how many and I don't have time to search them out and add them.   Which brings me to the point of this post. You've probably noticed I have slowly decreased the number of times I post in a week/month. That's been going on for awhile but has noticeable decreased since last summer. That is completely due the increased workload at my job, in whi...

  I have no idea who first came up with the two-for-one deal but they're not getting enough credit. I've been suckered into that pitch probably more than any other in my history as a consumer. It just happened the other day with -- no surprise -- cards. An ebay seller was selling two 1981 Topps Squirt panels for $2.99. I have no idea whether that's a deal, but for 3 bucks who cares? I needed that Dusty Baker, that's the whole reason I came across the sale in the first place. Yeah, I'll take two! It's amazing how often two of the same thing comes in handy in my hobby. As a set collector and a team collector, I can use more than one of the same card all the time. A couple weeks prior I ordered a 2023 Allen & Ginter Andre Ethier card that I needed as it's a short-print. I didn't read carefully enough and two showed up to my surprise. But I needed two anyway, to knock one off of the many SP's in '23 A&G! In the case of the Squirt panels, I do...

  I don't need to tell you that I don't like the Astros. I don't need to tell you that I like Dusty Baker.   You can imagine the conflict when watching a postseason game.   Dusty Baker isn't enough to make me root for the Astros. One man -- one manager -- can't do it all. I mean right now I'm rooting for the Rangers, despite that team containing a manager I rooted against for years as well as one odious relief pitcher.   But, if the Astros win it all, as they've done too many times before, Dusty Baker will make it OK. Because at least Dusty won again, as he did way back in 1981 when he was a player, playing for my team.   I've been a fan of Baker ever since I read about him being traded from the Braves to the Dodgers in the newspaper way back in November 1975. I recall actually being excited about getting Baker though I couldn't have possibly known much about the guy at the time.    Dusty Baker played for the Dodgers for longer than he did for any ot...

  Just a quick post tonight. There's not a lot of time and you've seen these cards way too much on this blog. Yeah, I'm talking about 1975 Topps again. You know I'll never stop right?   On the occasion of Canada Day earlier this month I ordered up some O-Pee-Chee cards. I try to do something like that every July 1. This time I finally grabbed a few '75 OPC Dodgers. I've been very delinquent with this particular year with OPC, not sure why. All of the above are big cards so I am happy with the progress even though there are still Garvey and Sutton to go.   I also did a little bit of work with my '75 buyback chase. Just two cards this time but both are notable.   This Al Downing is now among my worst-conditioned buybacks. This doesn't matter to me at all. As I've said many times, Topps already marred the card with the stamp. So that card was cheap, but this one wasn't: I think I spent more for this card than any other buyback, but the guy is going ...

  I've already expressed my thoughts on Topps' new online Super 70s set here , here , here and here , so it's about time I spit it out on my own site.   The 2020 Topps X Super 70s set (no, I don't know what the 'X' means) is another Topps online-only collaboration, much like other, so-called "curated" sets. This time, Topps has combined with Ricky Cobb, who runs one of the most popular Twitter sites, Super 70s Sports. If you aren't on Twitter, the Super 70s site is an often amusing tribute to everything 1970s. It's not for everyone, the takes are frequently off-color and some would say antiquated, but for someone who grew up in the '70s, as I did, a lot of the nostalgia that comes from the site makes sense to me. It's one of the few consistently amusing places on Twitter. The set is 90 cards and you might think that something focused on the 1970s would be all about the 1970s, from design to feel to content. Two out of three ain't ...

Well, things are kind of back to normal around NOC. After trying about 21 different ways to get my scanner working, it finally occurred to me that maybe I scan too many images and I just wore the poor thing out. That's got to be it, right? How many times do regular people use their scanners? Once a week? A couple times a month? Meanwhile, I'm scanning 10 cards a day, on a light night. So, I went out and bought the cheapest scanner I could find -- because I'm just going to wear it out in a year anyway -- and I'm back to posting with pretty pictures. Since I've been dealing with evil scanners for the last 48 hours, I don't have a lot to say. But I did manage to buy a pack of cards while I was purchasing a scanner, too. One-stop shopping is still America's greatest invention. It was the same thing that I bought the last time I bought cards: You thought I'd try for something Panini-esque this time? Ladies and gentlemen, when the best product w...

Note to Night Owl: Introspective posts don't work when everyone is off at a cookout. OK, on with today's rambling. Even though I've been pretty busy with my job this Memorial Day weekend, I have managed to squeeze in some card things here and there. So let's see what I've been up to. (I've addressed most of this on Twitter, so if you've seen it there already, you can go play frisbee, or whatever people are doing outside now). I am in the middle of updating my Dodger binders again. This is something I do maybe three times a year. Some might consider it monotonous, but I like doing it -- a lot. What I don't enjoy doing is discovering in the middle of updating that I've forgotten some key cards, which happens ALL THE TIME. It happens a lot to me because I pull cards for blog posts and then forget I've pulled them. I pulled a bunch for that face percentage post and totally blanked that there were Dodgers cards for that post, and then upda...

As I get older, it gets more and more difficult to wrap my head around each year. It's 2015 already and I think I've just finished figuring out what 2012 was all about. For the last decade or more, the years have blended together, and I don't see that trend stopping, only speeding up. Baseball cards help slow things down a little. Each year of new cards is a marker for that year, and if the year goes by too fast, I can at least say, "well, I liked that set in 2008" or "this is what the cards looked like in 2010." Maybe that won't help in polite conversation when jerky co-workers are remembering each year by the countries they visited, but it helps me document things in my own little head. Unfortunately, it seems the years are now moving too quickly even for my baseball card collecting. Here we are raving about 2015 Topps and I'm still horribly delinquent in a number of 2014 card responsibilities. I still haven't completed the Dodge...